The Austrian foreign trade continued to decline in May, the imports and exports dropped by 21.4 percent and 22.1 percent respectively compared to the same period last year, amounting to 7.67 billion euro and 7.54 billion euro respectively.



However, according to the figure released by Statistics Austria on Thursday, the situation showed better in May than April. In April this year, Austria's exports had dropped as much as 27.9 percent.



On the other hand, the Austrian imports in May continued to decline, with 0.5 percent more decline than April (20.9 percent).



EU-countries are the main foreign trade partners to Austria, though, due to the general economic recession, the sum of Austrian exports to EU countries was only 5.39 billion euro in May, falling by 23.3 percent compared to last year. The imports also fell by 23.9 percent to 56 billion euro.



While in May, the Austrian imports and exports to non-EU countries fell respectively by 13.8 percent and 18.9 percent, amounting to 2.06 billion euro and 2.15 billion euro.



Statistics Austria admitted that the Austrian foreign trade was under the heavy pressure of the world economic crisis from January to May this year.